Salute the Lionesses

The FA needed a campaign to raise awareness of women’s football and particularly the Lionesses ahead of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2017.

Insight

The biggest passion point amongst 8-16 year old girls is pop music. Little Mix are currently the most popular girl band in the world.

The Idea

Salute The #Lionesses

Galvanise a nationwide wave of support for the Lionesses through the submission of ‘salutes’ and messages via social media to inspire the team and nation.

Implementation

We recruited the UK’s most famous girl band, Little Mix, to create a football-themed music video to hit song ‘Salute’ to act as a catalyst to drive social engagement with the Lionesses, specifically empowering young girls to show their support.

The new music video featured The Lionesses as the stars, alongside Little Mix, England men’s footballers and grassroots women’s footballers.

Impact

The Salute campaign became a genuine national movement, helping change the perception of women’s football to inspire a new generation of fans.

Through more than 100 pieces of User Generated Content from celebrities, influencers, County FAs and the Lionesses themselves we generated over 150 items of earned media coverage.

Channel 4 audience figures smashed expectations and all records for women’s football, reaching over 4m for the Lionesses’ final match.

And with over 1,000 uploads from the public, thousands of young girls across the country directly engaged with the campaign and shared their support for the women’s game.